But what does it mean? If I take a look at my own agenda, I have been involved in a review process for the University Library Eindhoven, visited the iDCC conference (just for one day, and met with David Groenewegen) in Amsterdam, had a virtual Board meeting for DataCite, and my first Steering Committee meeting for the LIBER group on Scholarly Communication and Research Infrastructures, had meetings with DOK Delft and our TU Delft Sports & Culture group to start working together, did a short talk on the Living Campus ideas for Young Delft, tested working at HNKR with @moqub, showed our Library to Raymond De Prez, Ron Dekker and Wim van der Stelt, had some KB colleagues over, spent a lunch meeting at the University Library in Groningen and …

Well I guess a busy agenda as probably a lot of others have. So what’s the point? The best moments are the unexpected ones, the talks in the doorway, or when wrapping-up, the ideas we share when a visitor spends some time at one of our exhibitions, or has a shared interest in cultural heritage. When we had our New Year’s cake, coffee & tea early January and I talked a bit about our highlights, I mentioned the potential added value a library environment has on “slowness”, and that this can be a virtue. To take your time, to meet the unexpected, to find something in common you never would have known otherwise. You might think a busy agenda would not allow this, but this is not true, as long as you take in-between time to be slow.

I just celebrated today the one year’s anniversary of DOKLab – a few of us at the party came to talk about a possibly new phenomenon, the slow book experiment, something like slow food. Not multitasking, zapping and speedreading, but taking your time to read, contemplate, debate and be “laidback”. And again not an original idea, I found a blog from one year ago on the Slow Books Manifesto, a pity though that blogreading does not count …

(the same site as the Slow Books Manifesto contained a post on a flopped book of Dr Seuss, you must read this and take a look at the pictures, see below!)

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